After wage deal, Gregoire won’t ask for more from unions

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Wednesday she wouldn’t seek further wage and benefit concessions from state workers between now and June as lawmakers look to cut $4.6 billion from the next two-year budget and another $500 million from the current spending plan.

“I’m not going to go back to state employees,” Gregoire said during a budget news conference. “I would ask you to compare the sacrifice of state employees to any other public sector people. Our state employees have stepped up, they have sacrificed…but they have families to support, and I have to be mindful of that.”

Last month Gregoire asked state workers to reopen existing labor contracts to help deal with rapidly-increasing budget deficits – something they didn’t have to do.

This week most state workers agreed to take what amounts to a 3 percent pay cut for 2012 and 2013. In exchange they’d get an extra 5.2 hours a month in paid time off, the state Office of Financial Management says. The deal would save $176 million in the general fund — and across all funds $269 million in the next biennium, according to the state. Gregoire has also detailed a plan to rein in state pension payments, with a hoped for savings of $400 million during the next biennium. And a coalition of state employee unions had previously tentatively agreed to increase their health insurance premium payments. For 2012 and 2013, the percentage would go from 12 percent paid by workers to 15 percent. The current split of 88 percent paid by the state and 12 percent paid by workers would remain for 2011.

The governor said state workers were being unfairly demonized. “I feel we’re at a breaking point…when they’re battered and blamed, and they feel, ‘is it worth it?'”

But some think the state should have more flexibility when it comes to public sector compensation, especially considering the fact that Gregoire’s proposed budget would do things like eliminate subsidized health insurance for the poor and needy, close state prisons and greatly reduce education funding.

Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank, says the budget crisis reveals how it is now necessary to have the Legislature, not the executive branch, take the lead in determining employee compensation.
“How is it good fiscal policy to deny lawmakers the ability to prioritize these decisions along with the rest of the budget?” Mercier asked. “The Legislature should have the authority to weigh all spending requests equally in the context of the priorities of all taxpayers and citizens and not be cut out of budget decisions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Gregoire said the public workforce – including teachers – was projected to be down 10,000 from 2007-09, and that number included a greater than 9 percent reduction in the number of managers. Under the governor’s proposed budget, there would be 206,312 state worker positions in 2013. That compares to 210,150 at the end of the current budget, according to the state Office of Financial Management.